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By Thomas GroveREUTERS • Sunday August 17, 2014 9:24 AM

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian rebels are receiving new armored vehicles and fighters trained in
Russia, with which they plan to launch a major counteroffensive against government forces, a
separatist leader said in a video released yesterday.

The four-month conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical phase, with Kiev and Western
governments watching nervously to see whether Russia will intervene in support of the increasingly
besieged rebels — an intention Moscow denies.

Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said
the rebels were in the process of receiving some 150 armored vehicles, including 30 tanks, and
1,200 fighters who he said had spent four months training in Russia.

“They are joining at the most crucial moment,” he said in a video recorded on Friday.

Moscow has come under heavy Western sanctions over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and
accusations it is supporting separatists in east Ukraine with fighters, arms and funds. Russia
denies those charges.

The risk of outright war between the two most powerful former Soviet states was highlighted on
Friday when Ukraine said it heavily damaged an armored column that had crossed the border from
Russia.

But Moscow made no threat of retaliation, instead saying it was a “fantasy” that its armored
vehicles had entered its neighbor’s territory.

Adding to the tension, Russia and Ukraine have been at loggerheads for days over a convoy of 280
Russian trucks carrying water, food and medicine, which remained about 12 miles from the Ukrainian
border, unmoved since Friday.

Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross said the sides still need to figure
out how to provide security before the convoy moves ahead under the Red Cross’s aegis.